Complete Solution vs DIY Foundation
Lightweight Charts is TradingView's open-source charting library. While it's a capable foundation for simple charts, diCharts provides a complete trading chart solution with built-in indicators, streaming, and dashboard components.
Feature
Lightweight Charts
Rendering Engine
WebGPU (GPU-accelerated)
Canvas2D (CPU)
Max Candles at 60 FPS
100,000+
~20,000
Bundle Size
25 KB
45 KB
Technical Indicators
Built-in (SMA, EMA, RSI, MACD, Bollinger)
None (DIY)
Real-time Streaming
Built-in streaming engine
Manual implementation
Depth Chart
Included
Not available
Heatmap / Treemap
Included
Not available
Sparklines
Included
Not available
Candle Styles
8 styles (OHLC, Heikin-Ashi, etc.)
3 styles
TypeScript Support
First-class
First-class
License
Free + Commercial
Apache 2.0
Order Lines / Price Alerts
Built-in
Basic support
The Verdict: Complete vs Basic
- Lightweight Charts is a solid foundation, but diCharts is a complete trading chart solution.
- diCharts includes everything Lightweight Charts lacks: indicators, streaming, depth charts, and more.
- WebGPU rendering means 5x more data points before performance degrades.
- One library instead of cobbling together multiple packages and custom code.
- Ideal for teams that want to ship faster without building charting infrastructure.
Choose diCharts if you need:
- Complete trading platform with all components
- High-performance requirements (100K+ candles)
- Need built-in technical indicators
- Real-time streaming out of the box
- Depth charts and heatmaps
- Faster time-to-market
Choose Lightweight Charts if you need:
- Simple candlestick chart only
- Fully open-source requirement (Apache 2.0)
- Building custom indicators from scratch
- Limited budget (free tier sufficient)
- Learning project or prototype
What You'd Need to Build with Lightweight Charts
To match diCharts functionality with Lightweight Charts, you'd need to build:
Missing Features
- • Technical indicator calculations
- • Indicator rendering overlays
- • Streaming data engine
- • Tick aggregation logic
- • Depth chart component
Additional Components
- • Market heatmap
- • Sparkline charts
- • Order line management
- • Price alert system
- • Volume profile
Ready to try diCharts?
See for yourself why teams are switching to diCharts for their trading platforms.